In this excellent post, Peter Levine, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talks about the profound impact a CEO has on the culture of a company.

This is so true ... companies are defined by their cultures ... and cultures are defined from the CEO on down. You cannot manufacture a culture that is inconsistent from the beliefs and actions of a CEO. No matter how hard you try.

It is a must read for any aspiring CEOs. Remember that the expectations you have of others must be aligned with the expectations you place on yourself. And that the behaviour of your team will eventually be aligned with, and influenced by, your behaviours.

The organization reflects the behavior and characteristics of the CEO, and that establishes the culture. Foster an environment of open communication and the organization inherits a culture of open communication. Operationally detailed? The organization becomes operationally detailed. Political? The organization becomes political. Curse a lot? The organization curses. Angry? The organization gets angry. Have a big office? Everyone wants a big office. It doesn’t matter what’s written on a coffee mug or on a “culture” slide, what you do as a CEO, day in and day out, and how you behave will define your company’s culture.

Despite the best intentions, companies often become culturally dysfunctional. This occurs when leadership has a perception about the culture that conflicts with reality, or leadership behaves differently than what might be written down. 

Mark Ruddock

Personal blog of an international FinTech executive.

Hi, I'm Mark Ruddock, I'm a Canadian entrepreneur with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology startups.

I'm currently Chairman of Finstar Labs. Our mission at Finstar Labs is to identify, invest in and help create the cutting edge user experiences, enabling technologies, and data science that will lay the foundation for the next generation of alternative financial services.

Prior to that I was Managing Director, International at Wonga, responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and our eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany.

Prior to that I was the CEO of Viigo, which became one of the most highly downloaded Blackberry apps of all time before being acquired by RIM (Blackberry) in 2010.

Before that I was the founder & CEO of INEA, an enterprise software company focused on the financial services industry, which was acquired by Cartesis in 2005, and is now part of SAP.